HOW COSSACK MAMAI WAS BORN 

Borrowings from different languages relate mostly to objects and notions absent in the borrowing language. Considering the nomads' collective-itinerant lifestyle, the notion Cossack could not have existed in the vernacular. Most likely, the Turkic peoples borrowed it from some other language. Polish historian Maciej Stryjkowski in The Chronicles of Poland, Lithuania, Samogitia, and All Rus (1582) tells about Kyiv Rus and Lithuanian Cossacks, and about Cossack routes. Researchers believe that the author got carried away, but assuming that the term is rooted in pre-modern times, Stryjkowski is right. The notion Tartar Cossacks can be explained by the fact that the Italian colonies in the Crimea hired Tartar freemen as guards.

The Indo-European community of Greeks and ancient Slavs characteristically worshipped the goat personifying the animal world, used for a variety of purposes, from food to milk, hides and horns. A small part of the cult has survived in the Ukrainian Christmas goat-leading rite. As people proceeded to domesticate animals, tending and preserving them as emergency rations, their lifestyle grew sedentary. It was then that the first tilling attempts were made. Mostly, people lived by hunting, collecting fruit and vegetables, and working their plots. All this placed the goat on a pedestal. Goat is kozak in Ukrainian, hence the word kozak or Cossack. As society evolved, particularly as new animals were domesticated, Cossacks with their goats receded into the background and were almost forgotten.

After the Golden Horde's onslaught routing the federated state of Kyiv Rus, with the domestic elite joining the Polish-Lithuanian state, and only the masses remained with the idea of building a national state. The elite's siding with the enemy camp was also caused by the spiritual decay of the Eastern Orthodox world, ending in the fall of the Byzantine Empire (May 29, 1453).

Vast fertile expanses dividing the plowmans' and nomads' habitats were extremely dangerous to travel across, let alone settle in, yet here one could be truly free and find one's livelihood. It was in this wild steppe that the old principles of military democracy were revived, along with the notion Cossack. New and better firearms were invented and developed, enabling small Cossack detachments to defeat numerically stronger steppe nomads. The scales tipped the Cossack way. The Cossack movement in Ukraine received a fresh impetus from Polish social oppression and persecution of the Eastern Orthodox faith. Could the Cossack movement, this huge process, be named using a foreign word, especially one originating from the enemy camp? Of course not!

The word Tartar comes from Tartarus, the mythological abyss, the Greek kingdom of the dead, as far removed from man as the earth is from heavens. Tara is the old Hindu for star - hence tarot cards. The new coinage, having the opposite meaning, was made by doubling "tar," coming up with Tartar. And the legendary Cossack Mamai's name was contrived using the same method: mai, maya, ma - all these terms relate to a female deity, the goddess of fertile soils. Cossack
Mamai "refuted" the goddess by hunting, fishing, collecting, and felling trees (and enemies).

Mamai's hairstyle is a forelock of hair on a shaven head, called oseledets, but the latter also means herring in Ukrainian. The larger species is called chub, literally meaning a tuft of hair. In his landmark dictionary Borys Hrinchenko also gave the form rusak. Considering that professional warriors, hunters, and fish were believed by many peoples to originate from the same underworld, kingdom of the dead, this similarity becomes quite understandable in terms of both the appellation and appearance.

When the Varangian warriors appeared in the Slavic land they became known as the Rus. Rus, or Khrus is the Slavic onomatopoeia for crunching, cracking, or crushing. In the earliest military encounters striking weapons - e.g., bludgeons, maces, mallets - proved most effective. Many a battle would be accompanied by the cracking of bones, a deadly music. Trus, or coward, and its plural form trusy (also meaning shorts) have the same root and a shade of meaning ("wet shorts" is a Ukrainian idiom, same as wet pants). With the Etruscans, the cult of the dead was almost as strong as with the Egyptians. It is quite possible that worshipping the kingdom of the dead caused them to vanish from the historical arena almost without a trace. We know about Etruscans and Perugians. And with the Slavs there were the rusaliyi dances of rivermaids - girls who drowned themselves, driven by despair. Every feast of our forefathers invariably included a ritual of honoring the dead. On festive occasions the table would be covered by the obrus tablecloth. Another possibility is that Jerusalem had been a place of worship of the dead before the Jews came, as evidenced by the Indo-European origin of the toponym.

In a word, Cossack Mamai has roots reaching into the mist of centuries.